Hitherto, various bases for pharmaceutical preparations or cosmetics have been known. However, when they are applied as pharmaceutical preparations or cosmetics on wet body surfaces such as a mucous membrane, they have insufficient adhesion to the applied site and insufficient local retentivity.
For example, as ointment bases for pharmaceutical preparations or cosmetics to be applied on wet body surfaces, those obtained by incorporating fatty base materials such as liquid paraffin, vaseline and the like with water-absorbent polymers such as gelatin, sodium carboxymethyl-cellulose and the like have been used. However, they have several problems such as inferior adhesion to an applied site, large particle size of solids content and pain upon application. As a means for solving these problems, an ointment base to which polyacrylic acid or a salt thereof is added has been proposed (see Japanese Patent Kokai Nos. 52-117416 and 53-86011). However, such an ointment base still has some problems. For example, it has inferior halotolerant properties, and a pharmacologically active agent or an active ingredient formulated tends to be unstable due to interaction with polyacrylic acid.